


an irregular star

by allp_wips



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-05-14 11:18:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allp_wips/pseuds/allp_wips
Summary: Alex Danvers is ten years old when she first learns what a soulmark is.





	an irregular star

She’s five years old, when she first realizes that other humans don’t have a star on their chest, a pale mark on otherwise tanned skin, almost like a scar except that she has never suffered an injury there. Alex realizes this when she steals one of her mother’s anatomy textbooks one afternoon and spends it reading the book from front to back.

 

Eliza Danvers doesn’t tell her what it means right then, though. Instead she presses her lips to Alex’s forehead, smiles a strange and tear-filled smile, and promises to explain it when she’s older.

 

\---

 

She’s ten years old, when she first learns what a soulmark is. Alex learns it from one of the girls at school, when she’s changing for gym. Somehow the idea is so overwhelming that it confuses and upsets her. When she comes home that evening and confronts her parents about, Alex is crying before she realizes it.

 

“I’m sorry that you found out like this,” Jeremiah Danvers says with a sigh, holding her close to his chest and rocking her, while Eliza brushes comforting fingers through Alex’s hair.

 

“We thought we should let you know when you’re ready,” Eliza says, and then shakes her head. “I should have realized, what with social media and everything these days-”

 

She curls to embrace Alex from the opposite side; double the comfort, but Alex keeps crying. At that age, knowing that there’s a man out there that she  _ has  _ to fall in love with, or else, isn’t comforting. It’s just terrifying.

 

(In retrospect, that should have been a sign in more than one way.)

  
  


\---

 

She’s eleven years old when she realizes that her mother and father have different soulmarks. She’s always known it, from trips to the beach in swimsuits and all, but that’s when Alex puts two and two together.

 

When she questions her parents about it, at first Alex gets troubled looks passing between them.

 

Later, Eliza reveals to Alex that she’d been married once before, to the man she’d thought was the great love of her life, her soulmate. Though he had loved her, in his own twisted way, he had turned abusive and short-tempered as the years passed, making their life hell. Their separation had been the only inevitable thing about the two of them.

 

“Then I met your father,” Eliza says, smiling off into the distance, her normally sharp eyes growing soft and dreamy. “We were just colleagues and he was widowed, and... he was just so gentle, Alex. And so easy to talk to. I’d never dreamed there was a second chance for love for me, until I met him.”

 

That’s how Alex learns that soulmates doesn’t necessarily mean a happily ever after. 

 

One year later, Jeremiah is taken by Cadmus, and she learns that even when you find someone else perfect, like her mother had, it can be taken away from you, because the world is cruel like that.

 

\---

 

Alex is eighteen when she realizes that her soulmate doesn’t have to be a man.

 

Before then, Alex doesn’t post her soulmark on databases like others do, and she hides it away from the public, even when out swimming or at the beach. If anything, she makes every possible attempt to prevent her soulmate from being found, rather than the other way around.

 

Then, a couple months after she turns eighteen, Kara comes home with a girl she’d met at one of her lectures. That’s when Alex first learns her adopted sister is bisexual. When she sees them together, it’s like a dam breaks inside Alex for the first time, and things she had locked away deep down come springing out. Vicki. That girl at summer camp. The barista at that one cafe Alex had loving going to, and where she’d stopped going the day after the barista had said something to her that Alex realizes in retrospect had been flirty.

 

All of a sudden, the idea of having a soulmark, the idea of someone being destined for her, doesn’t seem so oppressive anymore. 

 

That night, Alex logs onto a soulmark database for the first time.

  
  


\---

 

Alex is twenty-three when she realizes that she might never find her soulmate.

 

Her soulmark has been uploaded to every database for five years. It’s the kind of simple shape that  _ should  _ have been shared by someone, and been matched by now. Yet, this weirdly misshapen and irregular five-pointed star never finds a matching companion, despite the fact that almost everyone who uploads a soulmark to the databases ends up finding their match sooner rather than later, because of how internationally integrated and advanced the databases have become in recent years.

 

Maybe Alex is the one person who fell through the cracks, the exception that exists so that everyone else can get their happily ever after. Maybe her soulmate is already dead. Maybe they’re in one of the few parts of the world where the database doesn’t have an extensive catalog yet.

 

Maybe she’s just not meant for love.

 

\---

 

She’s twenty-four when she meets Hank, and starts working for the DEO, and realizes that maybe she’s based too much of her self-worth until then on whether some stranger would find her worthy of eternal love.

 

Working at the DEO is empowering in a way she’s never experienced before. It tests her skills to levels they’ve never been tested before, and Alex passes with shining colours, becoming Hank’s right-hand man before one year at the DEO is up.

 

With the DEO, she can protect Kara. With the DEO, she can save the world. How does love compare, to that?

 

\---

 

She’s twenty-seven when Kara reveals herself to the world as Supergirl. Twenty-seven when her world is changed irrevocably, for the fourth time in her life.

 

From then on, so many things are set into motion and so fast that Alex barely has time to think about her soulmark anymore. There’s having to prevent the public from finding out about Supergirl, not to mention dealing with Catco. There’s Maxwell Lord. There’s General Lane. There’s the Fort Rozz escapees.

 

There’s Astra, and her army of men bent towards melding Earth to their inhumane vision. 

 

Astra, who looks at Alex like she’s something strange and fascinating, even when Alex expresses nothing but contempt for the woman who’s Kara’s aunt. Astra who should have looked down on Alex as a mere human, but who instead blinks at her softly under the influence of kryptonite, and professes to like her. Astra, who could have betrayed them after her ordeal under General Lane’s kryptonite, but who instead remarks to Alex that she reminds her of Kara, and then keeps her word to not attack the vulnerable DEO forces.

 

Alex is twenty-seven when she meets a woman she’s supposed to hate, but whom she finds harder to do so every day.

 

\---

  
  


Alex has just turned twenty-eight when she stabs Astra on the rooftop.

 

It’s early February. In Midvale, it’ll be snowing at that time. In National City, it’s only mildly cold, up on that rooftop. 

 

Yet, Astra shivers as she lies prone on the ground. The blood seeping out of her is red as that of any human’s, and that sickens Alex more than anything else about the situation.

 

On instinct, she kneels by the fallen woman, feeling her pulse. It’s useless, the feeling in her gut tells her, but training won’t allow her to just let a patient - even this impromptu one whose injury is by her own hand- die without trying to save her. 

 

“Alex, it’s too late.” J’onn’s voice comes from above.

 

Alex scrabbles to find purchase on Astra’s black uniform, and rips it apart to get at the wound. 

 

“I need to stauch her bleeding,” she mutters feverishly, only half-hearing him. “I need some cloth, J’onn something- anything-”

 

She stops abruptly. Astra heaves great breaths as she lies there dying, looking straight up into the sky as if she’s studying the stars. Meanwhile, Alex is only studying her chest, gaping at it, her mind a tempestuous maelstrom. 

 

Because there, half-hidden by blood, just above the wound that Alex had made through her heart, is a tiny irregular star, an exact match to the one on Alex’s own chest.

 

Alex Danvers is twenty-eight when she finds out that she’s killed the person who was supposed to be her soulmate.

 

\---

**Author's Note:**

> I do not take constructive criticism.


End file.
